Trending Now

You are here

Zito Media issues continue to plague subscribers

Zito Media customers continue to experience issues with their cable television service despite the company's latest efforts in upgrading the system. The issue was raised once again during Monday evening's St. Marys City Council meeting as Tim Ruffner, director of environmental services at Elk Haven nursing home in St. Marys, voiced his concern about not receiving any feedback or assistance from Zito Media in reference to servicing Elk Haven Nursing Home and the Silver Creek Terrace assisted living facility.According to Ruffner, he has contacted the company numerous times pertaining to several issues, including providing residents with cable boxes and testing the facilities' cable to ensure it is capable of hosting the proper bandwidth, as well as billing and activation inquiries."I have asked the for an engineer from Zito Media to contact me. I have not had any return calls and I cannot give our residents support with these boxes until I contact them and we discuss the matter," Ruffner said.He added a number of residents are requesting the cable boxes-- there are 120 residents at Elk Haven and 55 at Silver Creek."I'm not getting anywhere with them. I know they have their hands full, I understand that, but I just thought I'd come down and ask if I could get some support," Ruffner said.Ruffner explained none of the residents have the boxes, as Zito said one of the issues is they are unsure if the facilities' cable has the frequency required to handle all of them.The billing allocation and activation are additional issues the facilities face, as they are not the same problems encountered by individual customers. Ruffner stated it took 15 minutes to help his neighbor activate her cable box and emphasized the length of time it will take to activate all the boxes at the two facilities. City Councilman Greg Gebauer stated the same issue is occurring at Pinecrest Manor nursing home, where he has a relative staying. Ruffner said he has been in contact with Pinecrest and each are attempting to keep one another updated on any progress made with the issue."This is totally, totally unacceptable if this gentleman is trying to contact Zito Media and they are not returning any of his phone calls. That's a big blow to some of those patients out there," Gebauer said. "Mr. Rigas stood before us, and I wish he'd come back again because I have a lot that I could tell him, made it sound like it was a very simple task and it took me almost an hour and 30 minutes on the telephone twice, so it wasn't what Mr. Rigas stated and it's obviously not how, because they didn't take into consideration anything to do with all the nursing facilities, so if there's anything we can do we should be doing it.""I think when they made the switchover, they totally forgot about our facilities and the way we're set up because we basically asked for a main support box to go under the cable system that would automatically feed all the cables to the rooms. They told me they don't have such a thing," Ruffner said.